This is a good thread

"In our time and place, a better group than the liberals to form a popular front with is instead the types of libertarians who’ve come to believe fighting U.S. hegemony is the most important priority. This is because whereas the liberals have shown they’ll only ever attack the communist organizations which support Russia’s anti-fascist war, the libertarians have shown they’ll ally with these most principled kinds of communists. "

For the anti-imperialism efforts yes as they are dedicated to their cause which aligns with ours when it comes to Russia v NATO, but not necessarily in working class organizing as this work is dependent upon class membership and not ideology.

“The problems with this plan, and with the parallel reformist actions the PSL has taken since then, were 1) that backing Sanders meant backing a project which had a net negative impact for the revolutionary cause, and 2) that the PSL’s reformist tendencies made it unable to bring whatever Sanders supporters it recruited into a genuinely revolutionary organization.”

There is a third actually that I see: He places his party in a weakened position first by telling them to support Bernie, then by telling them to infiltrate Bernie groups and explain to them why Bernie is inferior to the PSL. But he just ordered PSL to support Bernie, this is a contradictory set of orders and it places his followers in a weakened position when discussing the subject of Bernie and social democracy vs revolutionary socialism in general. A leader who seeks the revolutionary success of his party would not do this. he would seek to insulate his party members from revisionism, not make them more susceptible to it.

Which community is this? Are communities allowed sovereign control over their content or does this fall onto the shoulders of the devs since it is in the primary Lemmy instance?

I understand, of course many major things should be rejected, but my point was if we simply did the opposite of what they do we would be anarchists. The opposite of colonialism is not necessarily Marxism, however Marxism is the correct path to take to overthrow colonial powers. Do you see what I mean?

This is very true

You’re missing nothing. Most use mainstream sites to connect with the masses…or used to before the overwhelming flood of regime botfarms as well as subreddit coups which captured mods and flipped pro-left subs for the capitalists.

Interesting…I wonder how the devs will respond to this situation when it unfolds

You’re famous 😂

😂

Right? They just pull reality itself out of their ass, dust it off, and present it with glee

“As Marxists we must oppose everything the west approves of and approve of everything the west opposes”?

TIL Marxism is when contrarianism

“There is no flagship instance. The developers actively push sopuli.xyz and beehaw.org instead of lemmy.ml for multiple reasons.”

Lib is salty 😝

Well we didn’t really think we were getting all of the Redditors, did we? This website’s existence is evidence of the liberal content of much of Reddit as well as it’s owners and controllers.

For comrades already here, I wasn’t sure how to go about this sort of welcome post as I’m not entirely sure what to expect/who will be incoming, so I tried to cast a wide net.

Thus far I have held my tongue on HexBear as I have had very limited exposure to the site’s content. But since it seems to not be a mischaracterization I will say when I have looked on there it seems quite immature.

“So what is Marxism? Do I fit in here?”

It is ok if you are not a 10th degree grand master of Marxonomics, all you have to have to be welcome here is respect for the community and a willingness to learn. We will teach you.

Marxism is highly complex however the basic concept of it is:

Capitalism is fundamentally flawed, isn’t reformable, and requires a working class revolution to solve the constant revolving crisis’ of capitalism.

If you agree with the above statement you belong here.

Marxism takes a scientific and pragmatic approach towards solving this issue (organize, educate, agitate) as opposed to an idealistic one (we’ll just do a revolution and everything will be fixed!).

Welcome all new leftists! As per always, it is best to study works of our most successful comrades (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao) and their works can be found at Marxists.org for free.

Don’t I recognize your handle from Reddit?

I think it depends on the specific ideology but i’m generally for it

interesting

I do not see a correlation between an accusation of propaganda, and debating said accusation. In fact, it would be best if one presented example information (which of course aligns with the class interests of a majority switching) which acts as free advertising. We have nothing to be ashamed of and those who behest this are in quite the opposite position.

I would have guessed Family Guy/any Seth McFarland animation. South Park is a close second.

Perhaps they may come here and learn about and socialize with others who hold mutual views which the liberal faux left exclude (revolution, Russia, pragmatic material progress as opposed to performative optics and left aesthetics, etc…)

You have just performed the cyber equivalent of shaking up several carbonated beverages, and tossing them into a library filled with leftists.

My recommendation to this is to avoid the path others who have come to the same conclusions as you have fallen into: The story of the ultra left on Lemmygrad is one of exile due to an inability to play nicely with others. One can be pro-GO4 and/or anti-Dengist, but one must be respectful with others who do not hold the same views and one must be productive as well. Propagate your understanding of events, do not spend your time solely attacking others for theirs, whether their view seems revisionist to you or not. I believe there is a difference between being pro-GO4 and/or anti-Dengist and being an ultra left 3rd worldist/Maoist. I too once held similar views and this is why I say this.

I will say Khrushchev was hindered by the pre-existing Soviet infrastructure as well as the interests of the Soviet People and of course the geopolitical position the SU held which is evident when evaluating present day Russia who still occupies this space however without being in it with the other conditions present as well. This is why much of post Socialist MOP/revisionist USSR is remembered diversely by the Soviet Peoples with some saying good and bad things about the leadership (namely Brezhnev).

Understandable. We’ve all made mistakes like this. I used to be a socdem radlib who thought IDPOL was revolutionary. We all grow.

“I did not mean to kill/rape/exploit that man/woman/child/worker, it was a malfunction in the chip”

Bourgeois judge: “Not guilty, and neither is the company!”

“although (as often turns out in cases like these) the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found no evidence for a hardware or software problem, instead blaming driver error.”

And as per usual the capitalist system backs the capitalists.

Welcome to what voting is. You could have been organizing or reading Marx, something productive that aids the cause. Now you know.

This sounds inherently anti-human, opting to replace humanity with technology instead of using technology to advance humans (replacing limbs with machines instead of using weights to increase the natural ability of said limbs while maintaining their anatomic structural origins).

As well, this reminds one of the reality under neoliberalism; there are technologist labor aristocrats being directed by bourgeois who’s wealth is settled in cybernetic technology who have a goal of bringing the human body itself into the market in a new profound manner: the commodification of human will (complete control over labor-power) itself via a technological medium…such as the chips Musk has been spouting on about as of late which stands at an origin point for further technologies to develop towards realizing this goal.

Yes this goal is not currently reachable, but it begins with cybernetic implants under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. These technologies will serve their needs, not ours. Google search, Wikipedia, and their relation to the propaganda war against Russia is a perfect example of this.

Get em’! 🔥

The US constitution 😂

Reminds one of the biolabs in Ukraine

🏆 Great comment, loaded to the brim with value!

" Do advertisers give the products they advertise value?

My reasoning is that no, they do not give products more value. Useful labor gives value, whereas advertisements are both (a.) basically useless and (b.) not related to the production of the commodity. "

That’s exactly right.

“The person I was arguing with talked about how diamonds are useless, and they were artificially given demand by both ‘limited’ supply and vigorous advertisement campaigns. I replied that price gauging/differentiating exchange values does not mean an increase in use value/actual value,”

This is exactly what I would say.

“The other person then said that advertisements, in fact, contributed to the inherent value of a product (somehow?) by making the consumer enjoy the commodity more”

Value is not evaluated by enjoyment, if that were the case sex workers would be billionaires.

Yes they can be labor aristocrats. Labor aristocracy occurs when one’s job is valued (subjective) by the relative capitalist economic conditions above most jobs and crosses the threshold of real wages to extracted surplus value, making said worker being able to thrive under capitalism. Basically, worker gets paid to the extend their job allows growth and alleviates poverty, they are labor aristocrats, now they are benefiting from the capitalist system. The more this is true, the more aristocratic they are, and the closer their interests are tied to that of the bourgeoisie’.

“you won’t read Haywood, Crenshaw, Fanon, Freire, Tuck and Yang, Newton, X, because I personally haven’t managed to get through your rhetorical smokescreen?”

Correct, but fret not, I am likely to come across their works in my own studies regardless, and so if there is such merit in these works my theory will improve and reflect this merit in time.

“This is chauvinism.” Chauvinism is placing one’s nation or social group above anothers on false pretenses and the implications that follows it. Discussing nations in terms of their differentiating characteristics and the sovereign importance of this when speaking on Lenin’s point of national self determination in relation to the tribal nations and America is not chauvinism.

" I mean, at this point I just walk away."

I believe this is best. We do not seem to be moving in a direction of mutually beneficial resolution…unless perhaps one considers the notion to save us both the headache the other seems to be causing.

“People use drugs because of poverty? You’re ridiculous”

The generally held line of Marxists is ridiculous, no that notion that you know better than the community including our elder comrades who have raised successful revolutions and held this view is ridiculous. You’re the one who should look inward.

Drug use and drug addiction are not the same. Drugs enhance experiences, the rich use drugs to make their world even better and use occasionally (as evidenced by the fact their business empires still exist, drugs impair one’s ability to think and reason, their empires would have been crushed by competition if they were addicts. And no, drugs isn’t what makes someone immoral, economic interests are, so ruthlessness is not evidence to the contrary as some may believe possibly you possibly not), the poor use them to escape misery and because the misery is constant BECAUSE POVERTY IS CONSTANT, they are dependent upon these drugs. They are not the same.

“Seriously, Mouse. You’re in for a ride awakening when you finally figure out that your bullshit doesn’t match reality.” I welcome this hypothetical day as a chance to improve my theory, however as it stands today I am proven more and more correct. This may change this may not.

“I’m writing you off as a lost cause.”

Agreed. Then allow us to part ways.

Alright…since others have addressed the topics of the Tartars and little green men, I’ll speak on imperialism.

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage, Lenin explains imperialism is a natural result of capitalism outgrowing it’s national border. Capitalism evolves by the process of owners of businesses extracting surplus labor value from workers (stealing wages) in order to expand their businesses and capture more markets and thus more value. When a business does this and expands into another nation(s) to control it’s resources to satisfy it’s business’ interests, that is imperialism. Invading another nation militarily in not by definition imperialism. It can be done for imperialist causes, or it can be done to secure the sovereignty and/or existence of a state (of a competing bourgeois’ interests) as is the case with Russia and Ukraine, among other reasons as well.

Ukraine’s government is a puppet government, a vassal state of the US bourgeoisie (who are the big bourgeoisie for those who have read Stalin). The US has expanded into Ukraine with the intention to capture markets in Russia due to their economic interests (they have expanded to such an extent they require capturing all of Russia to maintain itself…that is how parasitic the US economy is)

As well, he differentiates capitalism as viewed as occurring in a vacuum within each respective country, and capitalism occurring as it does - within the global economy as 1 interconnected system. As such, if 1 nation goes to expand and doing so results in being eaten by competing capitalist powers, the expansion is not successful. In another hypothetical scenario, regional alliances between imperial powers who are able to project their power but whose interests do not contradict (those who are physically able to work together without resulting in a conflict over mutually necessary resources) can occur. As well, alliances can break apart when this scenario changes from one of harmony to one of conflict. The latter is what happened to the Russian bourgeoisie when they worked together with the NED and CIA to counterrevolt the Soviet Union, and then the latter stabbed the former in the back and expanded into Russian territory. Really though, if the Russian bourgeois had read works and applied the learning, they would have understood this was going to happen and a partnership could never occur as a power vacuum left by the absence of a superpower (and thus a massive resurgence of previously unavailable resources becoming available) necessitated western expansion.

These are 2 of many many aspects he explains far better than I could. I highly recommend reading comrade Lenin’s works Imperialism, the Highest Stage. I can’t count how many times I reference this works in my day to day. It is considered by most to be an essential read for Marxists.

Link here

Yes, lets automate ourselves out of the equasion, so that in time there will be no one to ask when a fascist changes the wording in the database of the machines and it now professes Trotskyism or Marcyism as Leninism.

Automation has much to offer our class, but until we command the economy, AI and automation can only serve to take tasks away from us and the bourgeoisie both determine what is automated as well as what the automated result is.

It will haunt them forever

“Reducing racism to ethnic relations and minority needs it to completely ignore racism entirely.”

I am not reducing racism I understand as you should that when the relations to the means of production advance, the social relations which maintained the previous mode of production will be shed as the new relations necessitate equality (all share the same class), and so the physical reason for racism to exist has been purged. This is the elimination of racism. What remains are capitalist pre-conditioning which must be combated via education, socialization, and solidarity.

"Race"s do have unique needs, as do sexes and genders. An ethnic minority who has been the victim of racism requires justice, requires a remedy for this injustice on a systemic level, requires protection and expansion of their ethnic cultures which were oppressed and mocked under white supremacy. Just as women require the remedy for sexism, and trans people require social justice and healthcare.

To ignore these needs is to perpetuate the same sort of cultural downfall the Soviet Union failed with and Mao aimed at solving. It is purging the superstructure of the capitalist system and creating the superstructure of the socialist system.

"The existence of municipalities in all former and current European colonies is literally the maintenance of setterism. "

This isn’t the maintenence of colonialism, it is the dialectical process of development. The global south is exploited by the social democratic European nations. This is not the same system, it grew out of it and share similarities however the relations to the means of production and the mode of production are different.

“What I missed is your level of ignorance…slave relations were maintained through indentured servitude, through sharecropping, through prison slavery, and through indigenous boarding schools. Second, under Jim Crow and under much of the current legal regime, black workers were used explicitly to appease white workers, by assigning to black workers the most abusive and lowest paying jobs so that white workers wouldn’t revolt”

(proceeds to demonstrate their-own) I have already covered this in my previous reply. You are not taking in the information I am providing. You said it yourself: “black workers were used explicitly to appease white workers, by assigning to black workers the most abusive and lowest paying jobs so that white workers wouldn’t revolt” WORKERS not SLAVES. The means of production were evolved and so the economic relations evolved. I am not saying nor have I ever said that the racist social relations which originated from Slavery went away entirely, I am saying they evolved and no longer govern the process of production. They are inferior to the relations of worker and owner, not that society hasn’t retained any semblance of Slavery. This is evident if you look at the overall picture of society and not solely the experiences of minorities in America who experience the effects of the remnants of these relations. It is possible for black Americans to own businesses, there are latino labor aristocrats, etc…this was not possible under Slavery. And yes I recognize the lag between abolition and the Civil Rights movement, but you must also recognize the ability for the Civil Rights movement to succeed under capitalist relations where it could not before industrialization and worker - owner relations developed within the late old system. So again, what are you missing here?

“Calling national liberation of black and brown peoples “fascism” is the most reactionary take I’ve seen from someone who considers themselves a communist. This is usually a position I see from white supremacists. You are woefully on the wrong side of history, comrade.”

A strawman…I expect this from Reddit liberals not here.

“The System of Racism created racist people. The System of Racism was created by the bourgeoisie to implement class warfare and extraction of surplus value.” That’s capitalism you’re describing and calling it “The System of Racism”. Are you referring to apartheid, a divide and conquer technique leveraging PRE-EXISTING social relations and the new advent of the middle class to maintain power (a form of superstructure OF CAPITALISM)?

“Racism and Slavery and Production INTERPERMEATE. You cannot abolish capitalism and then demand racial reckoning take a back seat on the theory that eventually racism will go away. In order to abolish capitalism you must ALSO abolish the System of Racism, and when black and indigenous MLs write about this, that means national self-determination inline with Lenin’s theory.”

Read several paragraphs up. As for the line of national self-determination I agree and this is not contradictory. America and the native tribes are already separate though interconnected countries. America is of land stolen from the latter yes but it is a distinctly separate country as are the native territories despite the capitalist system not respecting them. We can and should talk about changing the size of these nations to be more just but to pretend America isn’t a country (in fact) and to conflate it with it not being a country (in terms of historical lineage and of course justice) is idealist. America, the country with the capitalist mode of production and relations, exists today. It should no longer exist and we work towards this goal but to say “it’s simply land stolen” is to ignore socialism and aim for communism as the anarchists do. It ignores a vital step of addressing the physical issue of the resolution of that state known as America. And in this resolution, the nation of America must determine it’s future as well. One cannot simply ignore the existence of America and the people (workers) who live in it for historical justicial needs of the native territories. And do not conflate this with “you see, the whites will revolt”, I never said we would have to choose to maintain America, in fact I have brought forth several arguments as to why I believe the two nations will merge and the cultural roots of the former could be migrated into the new nation (akin to handing the new nation to the natives), however the natives are not currently in a state where they are able to govern a socialist country but they can be.

I see what you are saying I believe, a nation is not a race and so it is not liberalism to advocate they govern. Yes, this makes sense, we must simply train them in Marxism. Yes in the case of the natives it makes sense to advocate they lead. In the case of other minorities this is again necessary so they can ensure justice for their groups specific needs however simply excluding non-minorities from governing because they do not suffer under the modern remnants of slave relations isn’t based imo. American workers who are not labor aristocrats suffer under the yoke of capitalism and no longer benefit above the rate of poverty due to their lack of suffrage under the modern remnants of slave relations.

“Racism is literally a legal system whereby throwing black people off a ship in the middle of the Atlantic was not considered murder but was instead considered destruction of property! Literally! Argued in court that legally black people aren’t people and therefore cannot be murdered! It has nothing to do with individual beliefs about people being lesser.”

I have been moving forward under an understanding of this premise. I understand what racism is, I’m not a suburban labor aristocrat, I grew up and am still poor, I am white however I have seen racism first hand with friends and family. You misjudge me.

“RACISM CREATED RACISTS” Yes, but Slavery and agriculture created racism. This is what I’ve been trying to get you to understand. That fact and it’s implications.

“They’re not minority workers. They literally constitute the global majority.” I’m speaking on national terms. In America they are minorities. I believe we are speaking on America yes?

"They established completely autonomous nation-states for national populations and gave them autonomy over their nation and established the constitutional right for them to secede at any time without penalty. "

This is part of what I was referencing, I simply gave the example of the committees. We must build on the successes of previous worker states in similar situations.

“This is the most white European thing I’ve heard on Lemmy.” (continues to use the term ‘racial revolution’ unironically)

“White people live in places explicitly because they were stolen by white people from melanated people.”

I am aware of this. America developed on an injust notion of imperialism. This is why we oppose America and believe it must be destroyed. I’m not sure what notion you are going off of here comrade, I am trying to work with you but you are presenting a lot of misjudgements in regards to me despite my best efforts to demonstrate my positions to you. Much of what we are arguing about we agree on the what just not the how.

“You haven’t even managed to approach my argument, you have no standing to levy this critique.”

I’ve rebuffed your arguments continuously, I believe I do. I have not read anything you have suggested as you continue to demonstrate a lack of fundamental understanding on Marxism. Why would I expand my knowledge outward when you have not satisfied the rudimentary? Why is that necessary if we cannot agree on the process of economic development, social relations under the means of production, or dialectics? This would be entertaining building a roof when the base has not been set.